Fishing Forum

I had only been out once in four and a half months. I was pretty anxious to get fishing, so I was really excited when warm, dry, weather finally lined up with a day off. I shelled out my $100 bucks and headed north.

Things were a bit different than this time last year. There was a lot more snow making hiking into my favorite bow spot a bit tougher. Also the water was much lower and clearer making the fish quite spooky. The bug activity was also non existent for the first couple of hours. I managed a couple of fish on a leech, but they took a lot of work. They were both hunkered down in deep, slow water. Despite his lackluster feeding attitude, the second fish put on quite the show, jumping several times.

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The next few runs brought nothing. I usually clean up in that stretch, but over an hour of fishing brought me one bow and one missed fish.

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Eventually I made it up to my very favorite stretch of river. A bald eagle was circling the run as I approached, and I quickly caught a nice rainbow.

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Finally some midges and a couple of bwos began to come off, and the fishing picked up.
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I must be rusty, but I had a losing streak of about 8 fish on that rolled once and then popped off. I switched to a beadhead leech and finally hooked a few.

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Then, as soon as it started, the hatch subsided and so did the active fish.

I hiked up to the next run, and quickly caught a pretty cutthroat,
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but that was it for that run. Last year at this time I was hitting nice bows in the 15-20" range pretty consistently out of this run, but all was quiet this day.

I managed to scrounge up a couple more, including this nice buck which took a scud.

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As I hiked back out, I fished a cone head bugger through that first hole again, and I hooked and lost something huge. I thought I'd hooked a rock, but suddenly the rock took off. My rod bucked violently and then it was gone. A couple of swear words later, and I finished hiking out.

Overall it was by far my slowest day up there. There was still shelf ice in places, and as the day grew warmer, pieces of it would break off sending tiny icebergs floating down the river. I think the cold, coupled with the low, clear, water probably didn't help the fishing, but it was just nice to be out fishing again.
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Nice!
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fish is a fish, sounds like a fun day to me. hate it when the rock takes off on ya and spits the hook. makes for good fish stories though right? great pictures thanks for sharing.
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Yeah, don't get me wrong, it was still a really fun day, especially after how nasty Cache Valley has been the past few months. And though I didn't catch as big of fish as last year, they still averaged way bigger than if I had stuck around south of the border fishing The Logan or Blacksmith. I'm eager to get back up there after it warms just a bit more.
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Thanks for sharing some great pics. Sounds like a fun day.
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Thanks, I enjoyed sharing them.
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